Archive

Sean Dalton- Fact file

Background to the 'Good Samaritan' case | 16 March 2018

Sean Dalton died when an IRA booby trapped bomb exploded on 31st August 1988 in Kildrum Gardens in Creggan, Derry. Sheila Lewis was also killed instantly, and Gerard Curran died of his injuries 7 months later. They had gone to check on a neighbour who hadn’t been seen in a few days, and on entering...

Ireland v UK 2018

Judgement of ECHR | 20 March 2018

ECHR have rejected application by Irish Government to revise the original judgement in the Hooded Men case ROI v UK 1978. The 1978 judgement found that the treatment constituted inhuman & degrading treatment, but not torture. Today the ECHR has upheld that judgement 6-1 (Judge O'Leary dissenting- se...

As Glasgow University owns up to slavery wealth, others urged to follow

MOD treating Kathleen Thompson family with 'contempt'

| 13 November 2018

The family of a Derry mother-of-six, shot dead in her own back garden, says Britain’s Ministry of Defence is treating them – and an inquest into her death - with complete contempt. Even the Coroner hearing the case has expressed deep disappointment at the MoD’s failure to confirm the identities of s...

The Pat Finucane Centre at Féile an Phobail 2017

Facts about Atrocity: Reporting Colonial Violence in Postwar Britain

2 February 2018 | 22 August 2017

ABSTRACT What did people in Britain know about the violence of counterinsurgency campaigns at the end of empire in the 1940s and 1950s? In many ways, British knowledge about colonial violence was widespread. But it was also fragmented and ambiguous: whispered among family and friends; dramatized in...

PFC submission to Committee of Ministers re McKerr & ors v UK

21 Sept 2017 | 21 September 2017

Below is the PFC's recent submission to the Committee of Ministers concerning the McKerr group of cases. We have also attached the statement by the Irish Government to the CoM and their response issued today. Copies of other useful documents can be found on the Council of Europe website and the deci...

Lord Chief Justice admits: "We are breaking the law"

PFC Press Release | 05 September 2016

Families bereaved in the conflict are today witnessing the most senior judge in this jurisdiction publicly admitting his office is breaking the law. This is the only possible conclusion arising from a speech by the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Declan Morgan, given at the opening of the new legal year.

Torture Retold: How the Hooded Men case has come back under the spotlight

Rita O'Reilly, Irish Times | 12 June 2014

It was January 31st, 1972, the day after Bloody Sunday. The head of the army department in the British Ministry of Defence, John M Parkin wrote to the Chief of Staff, Northern Ireland, Brigadier Marston Tickell, seeking the facts on more than 100 allegations of torture and inhuman and degrading trea...

Amnesty International urges action by UK and Irish governments

Amnesty International Press Release | 24 November 2014

‘A request to the European Court must be lodged within the next two weeks. The clock is ticking’ - Colm O’Gorman. Allegations that the UK government sanctioned the use of torture and ill-treatment in Northern Ireland in the 1970s should be re-examined by the European Court of Human Rights and subjec...

Cruel Britannia: A Secret History of Torture, By Ian Cobain

The Hooded Men

Press release KRW LAW LLP | 24 November 2011

KRW LAW LLP is instructed by a number of The Hooded Men, those interned by the British government in August 1971. These 12 men became the guinea pigs in the British army’s deployment of ‘deep interrogation’ or what has become known as The Five Techniques. These techniques had been developed in the p...

Submission by head of MI5

Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller | 20 September 2005

The head of MI5 (the UK's internal security service), Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, has submitted a statement to the Court of Appeal in the House of Lords on the use of intelligence from a third state which may have been obtained by the use of torture, inhuman or degrading treatment. (PFC note-MI5 w...